Hi All,
The big news this week is our Black Friday sale running this Friday (29th) through to the end of Monday (2nd). 20INSF for 20% off all of our Instock Foils. I will be trying to add as much of our unsorted foils to the store as possible this week so there's more goodies on sale.
In addition to this, the first 2 Customers to spend over $250 on the black Friday sale will also receive a bonus free playmat!
With that out of the way, last time I talked about going down memory lane on some of the Foundation reprints, so lets do that shall we?
Savannah Lions. For this card what I remember most is during Champions of Kamigawa Standard. Damage went on the stack then, for those not familiar with that concept what it basically meant is that if you blocked with your Sakura Tribe Elder and put damage on the stack and then sacrificed it you would be able to get the land and also deal 1 damage to the creature it was in combat with. There were 2 white aggressive 1-drops in the format. Isamaru, Hound of Konda (a 2/2 legendary dog with no abilities) and Savannah Lions. Normally there would be a split of 4 Lions and 2-3 Dogs due to their legendary nature. However because of that particular Sakura Tribe Elder interaction Savannah Lions saw 0 play and Isamaru was bumped up to 4 copies in those decks.
Vampire Nighthawk. The first time this card was printed in limited was original Zendikar. It's a format I'm nostalgic for, possibly because I really like super aggressive formats. Triple ZEN, Triple GTC, and Triple ZNR are all draft formats I enjoyed, but my favourites are more balanced formats. For reference my top 3 limited formats are Original Ravnica Block, Triple Original Innistrad, and Kamigawa, Neon Dynasty. Anyways, back to Nighthawk and Zendikar. Zendikar was incredibly colour unbalanced, in no small part due to the Nighthawk. You could be the one non-black drafter at the table and still lose to all 7 other black drafters. That's just how much deeper black was than anything else. You will not see this in the Arena era, even if one colour is definitively the worst in a draft format, if you are the only person at your pod in it, you will still end up with a pretty solid deck. Especially if multiple people are fighting for the best colour combos.
Overrun. Overrun is a card I'm glad to see back. It used to be more common, but it hasn't actually seen print in a limited format since m12, over a decade ago. I'm actually a little disappointed that it's below par in Foundations draft as it's a card I like a lot. I had a stupid powerful M10 Sealed pool on prerelease weekend. Ant Queen, Overrun, and either 2 or 3 Llanowar Elves in Green. A moderately deep black with a bunch of removal, and 3 Lightning Bolt in red. I think I ended up playing R/G, but either way my deck went undefeated.
Hidetsugu's Second Rite. Luke Tsavousis had one of these in his deck at the Saviors of Kamigawa Prerelease. We played a bunch of extra games after he beat me and I couldn't seem to escape it. I tried Mana Burning myself below 10 life to avoid it, but he'd always find a way to kill me just as I got to 10. Each and every game.
Think Twice. Loved this card in original Time Spiral Block and love that it's good in Foundations limited, but really the best memories of the card are playing it with Burning Vengeance in Triple Innistrad draft. Burning Vengeance was definitely one of the sweetest archetypes in that format, though I still think the title of sweetest archetype in that format has to be Spider Spawning.
Progenitus. The memes when this card first came out were so groanworthy. It was the first time anyone had seen anything close to the epicness that was Protection from Everything, and the memes were all centered on "Well if it has Protection from Everything, it means it has Protection from this table, and even Protection from all of existence." There was an interesting legacy call once where one of these ended up in a Graveyard and both players missed it. The judge ruled that because there were ways it could legally end up in the graveyard in the format (IE Humility) that it could stay there in this game. Needless to say, neither player had Humility in their decks for this match.
Solemn Simulacrum. This one might be too well known to be included here, but it's likely been long enough that some people won't know that this card was originally submitted as a 2/2 Flyer for UG2 (Blue/Green gets all the coolest toys right?) but was changed to it's current design because they wanted to fit it into Mirrodin, the artifact set. I always wonder what this would have been like if it was just a couple of years later and popped into Simic in Dissension.
Juggernaut. This card has always been great in limited, everytime it's been printed, much like Icy Manipulator. And much like Icy it's most recent printing shows that magics power level has gotten to a point where this card is no longer playable and that makes me very sad. Guess I'll have to go to Old School for my Juggernaut/Icy decks...
Dark Confidant. I know this isn't technically foundations, but rather Jumpstart 2025, but I want to bring up the often forgotten fact that this card saw play as a 4-of in a top tier standard deck playing 4 Greater Gargadon. Yes sometimes you hit the Gargadon off Bob (Dark Confidant) and died, but the card was just so good that those circumstances were worth the trade off.
Right that's all I have for this week. Enjoy the Black Friday sale and I'll see you all in 2 weeks!
- Rose Willis
